teachable:pay makes creators’ lives easier; here’s why

We empower and enable creators to transform knowledge into income with our seamless, stress-free platform. And, as any experienced entrepreneur will tell you, the income part gets complicated quickly. That’s why we launched our payment gateways. Now you can get paid without getting frustrated. If you’re already using our native payment gateways—teachable:pay and Monthly Payment—you’ve already experienced all the ways we’re making running an online business a little easier in terms of payments and taxes.

If you haven’t set up our gateways yet, find out why you should as we take a deeper dive into exactly how teachable:pay and Monthly Payment Gateway can get you back to the heart of what you do best: creating.

teachable:pay v. Monthly Payment Gateway: a primer

Before we get into the hows and whys, it’s important to note that we have two payment gateway options. The first, teachable:pay, is available for members who reside in North America, and select European and Asian countries. (For a full list of countries eligible for teachable:pay, please see here.) The second, Monthly Payment Gateway, is available for members located elsewhere.

And, regardless of which payment gateway you utilize, it’s easy for your students to have multiple purchasing options when it comes to buying your courses. Because we know you want the fewest steps to buy and the highest conversion rates, we offer a number of purchasing options, including credit/debit cards, PayPal, Apple Pay®, and Google Pay™, meaning your students are only a click away.

You can learn more about how to set up the respective Teachable payment options here, but the important thing to know is how the two differ. Namely how they both work to get you paid for your work.

Monthly Payment Gateway

Due to Teachable’s 30-day refund policy for courses, Teachable pays creators using the Monthly Payment Gateway on the first of every month (or the next business day if the 1st is on a weekend or US holiday). This means if you make a sale in January, you will receive those funds from Teachable on March 1. Then, on April 1, you’ll be paid for sales made in February and so on.

teachable:pay

Creators using teachable:pay, on the other hand, receive course earnings daily, weekly, or monthly. This means credit, debit card, and PayPal transactions are paid out directly to your bank account via Stripe. This is based on the payout schedule set by the primary owner of your school, aka you.

Teachable:pay takes away a bit of that wait time so you get your money faster and can start re-investing in yourself and your course.

An enhanced and easier experience

But, a faster payout isn’t the only reason we launched our own native payment gateways. If you’re using your own custom checkout other than Teachable to sell your products, you’re responsible for collecting and remitting EU VAT and U.S. sales tax. You need to figure out how to collect and remit taxes on all your product sales and how to handle payments for your affiliates. Chances are, you require an accountant or some serious time and attention on your hands to tackle it all

We’ve learned from creators and entrepreneurs that no one wants to be bothered with busy work in business. You know, those small tasks that distract from the actual creating you want to do.

Unfortunately, busy work is unavoidable when running your own business. And, when we’re talking about things like setting up payments and collecting taxes, these tasks are particularly important.

Unlike some of our competitors, we’ve taken creators’ desires to heart. We want you to get back to what you want to do and not just what you have to do to run a business. Teachable:pay can make it possible for you to do just that.

“Anything that can automate stuff where I don’t have to do it is just heaven to me.”

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See it in action

For Teachable course creator and Squarespace web designer, Paige Brunton, this played a huge part in her consideration to use teachable:pay. The lower the barrier to entry, the better. As one of our first teachable:pay testers in Germany, Paige saw first-hand how easy it was to reap the benefits of the in-house payment gateway.

Although she previously was on third-party checkout with her Teachable courses (she has three!), she switched to teachable:pay to streamline her process and take away the burden of tracking down students’ locations. It also took care of registering in multiple countries, and paying EU VAT to all the various locations. Most of which were tasks she never even knew she had to do.

“I always had an accountant or a tax advisor doing it for me,” she said. “But I would also rather make it easier than that.”

What’s more, by transferring over to teachable:pay, she saved a bit of money in the process.

“It was just a lot of stress at the end of every quarter,” she explained. “And then, it was costing us quite a bit to pay this accountant to do all the filing for us and everything. So anything that can automate stuff where I don’t have to do it is just heaven to me.”

Your affiliate network made easy

It’s not enough that we want to get you paid faster, we’re also planning the growth of your business. When you first start out, you might be a one-person team, handling content development and marketing all on your own. As your business starts to scale, you find yourself with less time but growing a larger network of robust affiliates.

Using either the Monthly Payment Gateway or teachable:pay, you can opt-in to BackOffice, which provides services such as automatic author/affiliate payouts. On Teachable, you start working with others seamlessly and begin inviting other creators to be authors on your products. Similarly, you’ll find yourself with an audience who will root for your product and help you market it. That’s when you bring on affiliates.

In both cases, you can set how much revenue share and commission you’ll split with your authors and affiliates. You don’t want additional accounting work. And we don’t want that for you either. That’s why with teachable:pay or Monthly Payment Gateway and BackOffice, we manage their payouts for you every month. We even make sure they have their tax forms in place.

Simple is our specialty

By simplifying our gateways and moving everything over to teachable:pay or Monthly Payment Gateway rather than a third party, we can offer you a streamlined, all-inclusive way to get paid for your courses and coaching.

Most importantly, we can get you back to creating and sharing a lot faster.

Disclaimer:  At Teachable we love providing helpful information for creators getting started with their business. We provide helpful information about taxes, but we are not certified tax professionals. You should always consult your own tax, legal, and financial professionals to determine requirements related to your individual business.

Teachable DOES NOT provide legal or tax advice to users of teachable:pay. By using teachable:pay, You are solely responsible for obtaining any such legal advice and tax advice that You consider appropriate in connection with Your use of teachable:pay.